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Post by carp (SPC, Itoh Respect Army) on Nov 14, 2019 17:18:12 GMT -5
]Right, a key thing about a tier system is that it has to exist with a purpose in mind, like creating a path for new talent to get over, and establishing top stars who are your biggest ticket sellers. Like, before he left NJPW Trent Baretta beat Yujiro Takahashi in a singles match; not the biggest deal in the world on paper since Yujiro is a lower midcarder, but it established Trent as an up and coming heavyweight who could now start aiming higher. It allowed for progression. But yeah, the issue is trusting WWE to handle any of it well. This is all so overcomplicated, though. This is a tier system solving a problem that it, itself created. You don't need to tell progression stories if there aren't tiers to progress through. And justifying a system where 95% of the time you know who's going to win just from knowing who's in a match does not get redeemed by the 5% of the time there's an upset. That's still 95% boring TV. And again, it's arbitrary. Why is Kevin Nash tier 1 but Dean Malenko is only tier 3? He was chosen. Kayfabe is dead, and so fans know that's why. And why would Nash be chosen over Malenko? You gotta start throwing around these bullshit fake-meritocracy justifications, like Malenko didn't 'get over' (which is self-fulfilling, of course, he was presented as Tier 3). And so now every star is Lex Luger, because every star IS Lex Luger: someone just chosen from on high because f*** you. Because these tiers don't just reflect presentation; they reflect payment and perks. They're actual status in the actual company. People have the actual belief, "Why would you pay him that much; he's a jobber?" If jobbers were really there to do a key job that needs to be done for the functioning of the company, why are jobbers paid worse? Why's it so much less of a big deal when they leave or get fired? There's this weird cover-story that they failed to be stars, even though that's kayfabe. (and actually come to think of it, maybe this is exactly the point: it's from promoters learning they can get away with paying much of the roster less because they didn't 'earn it.') All of this is very simply fixed by just not having tiers. 50/50 booking outside the context of tiers is not a problem at all, because then every loss won't half-mean "this dude's a loser who's not getting pushed," and that's the confusing part.
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Post by Starshine on Nov 14, 2019 18:19:11 GMT -5
]Right, a key thing about a tier system is that it has to exist with a purpose in mind, like creating a path for new talent to get over, and establishing top stars who are your biggest ticket sellers. Like, before he left NJPW Trent Baretta beat Yujiro Takahashi in a singles match; not the biggest deal in the world on paper since Yujiro is a lower midcarder, but it established Trent as an up and coming heavyweight who could now start aiming higher. It allowed for progression. But yeah, the issue is trusting WWE to handle any of it well. This is all so overcomplicated, though. This is a tier system solving a problem that it, itself created. You don't need to tell progression stories if there aren't tiers to progress through. And justifying a system where 95% of the time you know who's going to win just from knowing who's in a match does not get redeemed by the 5% of the time there's an upset. That's still 95% boring TV. And again, it's arbitrary. Why is Kevin Nash tier 1 but Dean Malenko is only tier 3? He was chosen. Kayfabe is dead, and so fans know that's why. And why would Nash be chosen over Malenko? You gotta start throwing around these bullshit fake-meritocracy justifications, like Malenko didn't 'get over' (which is self-fulfilling, of course, he was presented as Tier 3). And so now every star is Lex Luger, because every star IS Lex Luger: someone just chosen from on high because f*** you. Because these tiers don't just reflect presentation; they reflect payment and perks. They're actual status in the actual company. People have the actual belief, "Why would you pay him that much; he's a jobber?" If jobbers were really there to do a key job that needs to be done for the functioning of the company, why are jobbers paid worse? Why's it so much less of a big deal when they leave or get fired? There's this weird cover-story that they failed to be stars, even though that's kayfabe. (and actually come to think of it, maybe this is exactly the point: it's from promoters learning they can get away with paying much of the roster less because they didn't 'earn it.') All of this is very simply fixed by just not having tiers. 50/50 booking outside the context of tiers is not a problem at all, because then every loss won't half-mean "this dude's a loser who's not getting pushed," and that's the confusing part. But tier systems exist in every form of entertainment. Yes, even in WWE today. It's why there's always headlining acts, supporting cast, special guests, and extras. If you take those tiers and grade WWE wrestlers to them you'd easily label the headliners, then just clump just about everyone else in the supporting cast tier. There's almost no extras/jobbers who can help bolster up that tier to make them seem special in any form. So we're left with the supporting cast who when not bolstering up the headliners are just mingling with each other without any real focus or direction. Which means no one stands out and ultimately no one for the audience to really care about.
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Post by carp (SPC, Itoh Respect Army) on Nov 14, 2019 23:33:17 GMT -5
This is all so overcomplicated, though. This is a tier system solving a problem that it, itself created. You don't need to tell progression stories if there aren't tiers to progress through. And justifying a system where 95% of the time you know who's going to win just from knowing who's in a match does not get redeemed by the 5% of the time there's an upset. That's still 95% boring TV. And again, it's arbitrary. Why is Kevin Nash tier 1 but Dean Malenko is only tier 3? He was chosen. Kayfabe is dead, and so fans know that's why. And why would Nash be chosen over Malenko? You gotta start throwing around these bullshit fake-meritocracy justifications, like Malenko didn't 'get over' (which is self-fulfilling, of course, he was presented as Tier 3). And so now every star is Lex Luger, because every star IS Lex Luger: someone just chosen from on high because f*** you. Because these tiers don't just reflect presentation; they reflect payment and perks. They're actual status in the actual company. People have the actual belief, "Why would you pay him that much; he's a jobber?" If jobbers were really there to do a key job that needs to be done for the functioning of the company, why are jobbers paid worse? Why's it so much less of a big deal when they leave or get fired? There's this weird cover-story that they failed to be stars, even though that's kayfabe. (and actually come to think of it, maybe this is exactly the point: it's from promoters learning they can get away with paying much of the roster less because they didn't 'earn it.') All of this is very simply fixed by just not having tiers. 50/50 booking outside the context of tiers is not a problem at all, because then every loss won't half-mean "this dude's a loser who's not getting pushed," and that's the confusing part. But tier systems exist in every form of entertainment. Yes, even in WWE today. It's why there's always headlining acts, supporting cast, special guests, and extras. If you take those tiers and grade WWE wrestlers to them you'd easily label the headliners, then just clump just about everyone else in the supporting cast tier. There's almost no extras/jobbers who can help bolster up that tier to make them seem special in any form. So we're left with the supporting cast who when not bolstering up the headliners are just mingling with each other without any real focus or direction. Which means no one stands out and ultimately no one for the audience to really care about. But the way someone "seems special" is that they do things and affect the plot, or even just that they get airtime to do their thing. There aren't "tiers" like you're saying, where the people on the bottom exist to make the people on the top look good. Movies don't hire extras so the supporting cast will look important by comparison; they hire extras to fill out crowds! I agree that it doesn't make sense to have Headliners and then Everyone Else, but you shouldn't have THAT distinction, either. Someone can be a major focus of the show for a period because they're DOING something important. You don't need them to BE important. That just serves to bulk up this bullshit fake meritocracy thing.
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Post by Starshine on Nov 14, 2019 23:50:01 GMT -5
But tier systems exist in every form of entertainment. Yes, even in WWE today. It's why there's always headlining acts, supporting cast, special guests, and extras. If you take those tiers and grade WWE wrestlers to them you'd easily label the headliners, then just clump just about everyone else in the supporting cast tier. There's almost no extras/jobbers who can help bolster up that tier to make them seem special in any form. So we're left with the supporting cast who when not bolstering up the headliners are just mingling with each other without any real focus or direction. Which means no one stands out and ultimately no one for the audience to really care about. But the way someone "seems special" is that they do things and affect the plot, or even just that they get airtime to do their thing. There aren't "tiers" like you're saying, where the people on the bottom exist to make the people on the top look good. Movies don't hire extras so the supporting cast will look important by comparison; they hire extras to fill out crowds! I agree that it doesn't make sense to have Headliners and then Everyone Else, but you shouldn't have THAT distinction, either. Someone can be a major focus of the show for a period because they're DOING something important. You don't need them to BE important. That just serves to bulk up this bullshit fake meritocracy thing. Except the airtime typically isn't equally shared, that'd be an example of putting a tier the importance of characters, so to say. I guess a batter comparison to jobber/extras is that they're basically window dressing to a scene. You're not meant to focus on them, they solely exist to help create the setting. In a pro wrestling context that would mean to help establish the other guy in the match with the fans. I do think it's important to always have strong headlining acts, because we typically as fans tend to gravitate towards one or two members of any group we follow. It's the same with music groups, comedy troupes, TV casts, and whatever else you can think of. WWE's problem when it comes to this is they don't know how to present top acts outside of a very specific character set entirely to Vince's tastes, and that has always resulted in divisive faces. The last things I want to add is that our minds tend to struggle to focus on more than 4 things at once. So it's important to sell certain stories as more important so you don't risk fans getting overwhelmed with too many things going on with the same level of intensity and detail. I'm all for more wrestlers getting involved in engaging stories, but not everyone needs to be presented as super important to the overall narrative of the show.
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Post by HMARK Center on Nov 15, 2019 6:44:51 GMT -5
I think we all agree that it's important that just about everybody on the show actually do something to keep them relevant to the audience. That goes for main eventers, midcarders, and even low tier acts, arguably sometimes even jobbers; if the fans feel invested in what they're doing, they'll care more about the entire show.
But I don't agree that things need to be looked on with a "backstage WCW politics" view when determining who's in what tier; it's up to a smart booker to know what kinds of talent they're working with, what role best suits those talents, what the long term potential is for each wrestler in terms of card position, etc., and book accordingly. Some people are can't miss main eventers; other have that potential but need to be built up over time; others are "mechanics", as Steve Austin says, who solidify your midcard, etc. Doesn't mean people can't move around the card, but a good booker should have a feel for each wrestler's upside.
Lucha Underground was a promotion that did a good job of starting out without a clear tier system, instead presenting everybody as a relatively equal threat, but even then after a time things began to shake out into an "it's reasonable to expect X to beat Y" form. That doesn't mean Y has to be a loser, not have a story or character arc, or otherwise be uninteresting; to the contrary, LU did a fine job of taking wrestlers who might've started out lower in some people's eyes early on and building them up over time into headlining acts, and even if they didn't they still allowed the lower level wrestlers to display personalities and take active roles in storylines. But it does mean that in order for expectations to ever be successfully subverted, they first need to be established, and even LU got to the point where it was clear that, say, Pentagon, Puma, and Mil Muertes were the top card acts, that guys like Cuerno and Fenix were a tick below them, and on down the line. Didn't mean the top guys could never lose, but it meant they entered matches as the odds on favorites.
I just feel like this is another area where WWE has kind of poisoned the discourse well; their tier system, such as it is, basically boils down to "You Matter" and "You Don't Matter", and then they still 50/50 book their roster into oblivion to keep anyone from becoming a star unless the office wants them to be one seen as one. They could easily do it better than this: don't allow anybody to fall into the "you don't matter" category, be more receptive to fan reactions for particular wrestlers, don't be afraid to let someone go over cleanly more often than not, etc., but they just seem terrified to commit to anyone who isn't in the incredibly tiny handful of people they've designated as "mattering". Everybody should matter on a wrestling show; doesn't mean they'll win all the time, but no matter your position you should be booked to elicit a fan reaction, not to just wallow in booking purgatory.
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ssdrivin
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Post by ssdrivin on Nov 15, 2019 9:36:48 GMT -5
But in real sports there is a sort of stepped gradient. Chances are pretty high that some rookie team or physically less capable competitor will lose against a top tier team because they're just not as good. You're allowed to be "not as good", you can still be competitive within your tier, and over time you might develop skills and strength to climb that ladder and eventually find yourself consistently in the next tier. But it doesn't make a ton of sense to me to have someone, for example, failing to get anywhere chasing the IC title but then somehow a storyline says "ok, you're fighting Lesnar now, because we need a well-liked underdog" when there's very few (and more nuanced then WWE can muster) circumstances where that makes any logical sense. You know Lesnar's going to win, because his opponent a) isn't Lesnar, and Lesnar wins, and b) has demonstrated consistently in recent history that they just aren't on Lesnar's level. To be Lesnar-specific for a moment, the issue I've always had with Lesnar is that he is essentially his own tier, it's rare that anybody else ever comes close, and that I agree is boring. If the tiers were more broad with more free flowing movement for people in them (given appropriate character development to make that meaningful) then it'd be less of an issue. Besides, I don't mind there being a jobber tier, as long as they're still entertaining in some way. Think of the characters we had 20 years ago; Snow, Holly, Saturn, Venis, Kaientai, to name a few. They weren't gonna beat HHH or Austin or The Rock (at least not without shenanigans/a multi-way match), but they might've beaten Benoit, (E.) Guerrero, Malenko, etc, who might have stood a chance in a match with the top guys if the stars aligned. Then you had the other style of big midcarders, like Kane, Henry, Big Show, etc, who could've been a threat too, if the wind blew in the right direction. Basically I guess what I'm saying is I like knowing where somebody is in the pecking order, because although there's some accounting for mismatched styles of wrestling there's going to be some sort of pecking order. There can be upsets and lucky wins, but you wouldn't expect Punk to beat Lesnar in a UFC fight, and I wouldn't expect Punk to beat Lesnar in WWE either - not just because of their physical size, training, and capabilities, but because of booking. Otherwise you end up with weird situations where (for example) Punk (as an upper midcarder/lower top tier) beats Lesnar (god tier, in WWE's eyes) but then somehow can't get the job done against, I dunno, Ziggler (lower midcarder/jobber). There needs to be some sort of consistency, structure, and logic, or else it's just "some guys fight sometimes, the outcome is determined by dice roll".
I can back that, too. To bring a sports comparison into it, there are teams in the Premier League who, at this moment, shouldn't be beating Liverpool because they're top of the league and, for the sake of this example, Southampton are 19th. So the narrative going into it is will this be another easy win for Liverpool or will Southampton have something prepared to dent their confidence and get a draw or even a win? But because of various reasons, Southampton still have their fanbase and history established so unless they go to pot, they'll be fine for the future but it's really about the narrative now. Zack Ryder isn't a high tier star right now but this is a guy whose won the IC title at WrestleMania with the odds against him, been a former US champion and helped guide him and Hawkins to a tag team title victory at the WrestleMania pre show. If you build him well enough, you could have a match where at the very least he can hang with AJ Styles for the US title. Reading between the lines, though, they've made him look like a goober regardless so it'd be hard for anyone to take him seriously when 99% of the time, he's losing his belt on the first defense or getting squashed by The Viking Raiders 2 out of 4 weeks of the month.
As it happens, while I'm not into football myself, that's what I had in mind - though perhaps a little broader. Specifically, I was thinking of tiers as "divisions"; as you say, Southampton would typically struggle to show Liverpool what for, but in my mind that's your "top tier", your main eventers if you like, and even within that top tier there's going to be a gradient of who's the absolute best, who's almost as good, who's less good but still strong, etc.
Then below that you have your next tier with its own league table, your upper-midcarders, and the next, your lower-midcarders, and so on. Any team in any of those divisions can compete in its own league table, and if it does really well for long enough then it outranks all the others in its league and gets promoted, and in theory a team that's currently playing in the BetVictor Southern League could climb up to the next level, and the next, and so forth, until eventually (unlikely, but possible) the Premier League. Same with wrestlers, if your lower-midcarder beats enough other lower-midcarders for long enough, they drift up into the next "league" or "tier" and perhaps beat some of the lower names there, until they hit their natural limit for their character and hover around that point until something substantial happens to move them.
I think a similar timescale would be appropriate too - a football team may take an entire season or more to move from "a bit crap" to "damn, they're getting a promotion, good job!" (or vice versa), and likewise I think it makes sense for a wrestler to take time to progress instead of yoyoing up and down the ranks on the whims of a writer. It should be a natural, gradual progression and not done just to fill this week's plot hole. Edit: Similarly, a team/wrestler can progress, but then find they can't hang with the big boys, and naturally drop back down after a period of sustained losses, they get relegated/demoted and end up back in the lower league.
I wouldn't necessarily want WWE to be as explicit with that, in terms of hard ranking tables and league boundaries showing precisely how everybody stacks up in numbers, but I think as viewers we just absorb that ranking system naturally. We know that Zack Ryder isn't going to beat HHH, or Ziggler isn't going to beat Goldberg, we have a sense of who's in whose league or not and some level of hysteresis to allow for people winning or losing outside of their immediate position in the notional "league tables". Sort of like if you stitched all the league tables end to end, but had soft boundaries indicating that a team has become good enough to have "levelled up" (or down) from their previous table to the one they're now in.
Only in theory would there be "leagues" or "tiers", the whole thing would be just a big gradient of "least good" to "most good". That's where your local enhancement talent/true jobbers would come in, to give wrestlers at the very bottom a way to say "look, I may not be the best in WWE, far from it, but I'm still world class, look how I dispatch these local jobbers - they're some of the best in this state, and I can still beat them - I will be better some day, I have my eye on the prize, and I will keep striving to get there".
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Nov 15, 2019 9:44:31 GMT -5
My question when it comes to the use of local enhancement talents... How does the wrestling promotion prevent that concept from falling prey to, I suppose it would be genre-savviness in a way? Like, I get its to get the optics of someone getting a win, doing their moves and showcasing their character over a disposable opponent that you don’t have to worry about the consequences for, but how do you stop the average fan from going “Oh, this lower card guy only ever beats the local guys, he always loses to the other guys on the roster, HE DOESN’T MATTER”?
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Post by eJm on Nov 15, 2019 9:47:10 GMT -5
My question when it comes to the use of local enhancement talents... How does the wrestling promotion prevent that concept from falling prey to, I suppose it would be genre-savviness in a way? Like, I get its to get the optics of someone getting a win, doing their moves and showcasing their character over a disposable opponent that you don’t have to worry about the consequences for, but how do you stop the average fan from going “Oh, this lower card guy only ever beats the local guys, he always loses to the other guys on the roster, HE DOESN’T MATTER”? Not sure this answers your question but it reminded me, Gene Snitsky actually debuted on Raw as an enhancement talent against Kane and him getting by with a fluke win resulted, in kayfabe, in him getting signed and then feuding with Kane. To answer your question, I guess it depends on the story being told maybe?
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Nov 15, 2019 9:54:16 GMT -5
My question when it comes to the use of local enhancement talents... How does the wrestling promotion prevent that concept from falling prey to, I suppose it would be genre-savviness in a way? Like, I get its to get the optics of someone getting a win, doing their moves and showcasing their character over a disposable opponent that you don’t have to worry about the consequences for, but how do you stop the average fan from going “Oh, this lower card guy only ever beats the local guys, he always loses to the other guys on the roster, HE DOESN’T MATTER”? Not sure this answers your question but it reminded me, Gene Snitsky actually debuted on Raw as an enhancement talent against Kane and him getting by with a fluke win resulted, in kayfabe, in him getting signed and then feuding with Kane. To answer your question, I guess it depends on the story being told maybe? Same would apply to The 123 Kid too... Dude beats Razor Ramon, and he sticks around as a featured talent for a couple of years after that. But I’m thinking more along the lines of heating people up... Hypothetically, let’s say Eric Young beats some enhancement guys for a month or so, but that’s only so, when he fights someone higher on the card like Humberto Carrillo, it means a little bit of something more when Carrillo wins... But what does that actually do for Young? Unless he wins that match, he’s hit his ceiling already in the eyes of the average fan. He’s seen as “lesser than” someone else.
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ssdrivin
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Post by ssdrivin on Nov 15, 2019 9:56:05 GMT -5
My question when it comes to the use of local enhancement talents... How does the wrestling promotion prevent that concept from falling prey to, I suppose it would be genre-savviness in a way? Like, I get its to get the optics of someone getting a win, doing their moves and showcasing their character over a disposable opponent that you don’t have to worry about the consequences for, but how do you stop the average fan from going “Oh, this lower card guy only ever beats the local guys, he always loses to the other guys on the roster, HE DOESN’T MATTER”?
I think for that you'd either:
a) Keep moving people up slightly by introducing new guys from development (or NXT, before it became a 3rd brand), some of whom will take the new bottom spot, while others rise up through the ranks
b) Shift people around a bit from time to time - as in the football example, it's possible to get demoted as well as promoted, so if there's some reason why the bottom guy gets better and rises up, or there's some reason why better guys get worse, you can freshen up the bottom of the stack with that movement
c) Just have them be fun characters so it's no longer a question of how much they suck, but instead how entertaining they are to watch do silly stuff or get beat up. As long as the bottom tier guys are fun and interesting to watch, I don't think it necessarily matters as much if they suck in terms of (on-screen) "wrestling ability". Think Heenan trying to get into RAW, or Kaientai getting demolished by the APA, or Al Snow talking to Head, just fun character-related gimmicks to lighten up the show a bit and give the lower guys a chance to be somebody
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Post by carp (SPC, Itoh Respect Army) on Nov 15, 2019 16:15:19 GMT -5
I think we all agree that it's important that just about everybody on the show actually do something to keep them relevant to the audience. That goes for main eventers, midcarders, and even low tier acts, arguably sometimes even jobbers; if the fans feel invested in what they're doing, they'll care more about the entire show. But I don't agree that things need to be looked on with a "backstage WCW politics" view when determining who's in what tier; it's up to a smart booker to know what kinds of talent they're working with, what role best suits those talents, what the long term potential is for each wrestler in terms of card position, etc., and book accordingly. Some people are can't miss main eventers; other have that potential but need to be built up over time; others are "mechanics", as Steve Austin says, who solidify your midcard, etc. Doesn't mean people can't move around the card, but a good booker should have a feel for each wrestler's upside. Lucha Underground was a promotion that did a good job of starting out without a clear tier system, instead presenting everybody as a relatively equal threat, but even then after a time things began to shake out into an "it's reasonable to expect X to beat Y" form. That doesn't mean Y has to be a loser, not have a story or character arc, or otherwise be uninteresting; to the contrary, LU did a fine job of taking wrestlers who might've started out lower in some people's eyes early on and building them up over time into headlining acts, and even if they didn't they still allowed the lower level wrestlers to display personalities and take active roles in storylines. But it does mean that in order for expectations to ever be successfully subverted, they first need to be established, and even LU got to the point where it was clear that, say, Pentagon, Puma, and Mil Muertes were the top card acts, that guys like Cuerno and Fenix were a tick below them, and on down the line. Didn't mean the top guys could never lose, but it meant they entered matches as the odds on favorites. I just feel like this is another area where WWE has kind of poisoned the discourse well; their tier system, such as it is, basically boils down to "You Matter" and "You Don't Matter", and then they still 50/50 book their roster into oblivion to keep anyone from becoming a star unless the office wants them to be one seen as one. They could easily do it better than this: don't allow anybody to fall into the "you don't matter" category, be more receptive to fan reactions for particular wrestlers, don't be afraid to let someone go over cleanly more often than not, etc., but they just seem terrified to commit to anyone who isn't in the incredibly tiny handful of people they've designated as "mattering". Everybody should matter on a wrestling show; doesn't mean they'll win all the time, but no matter your position you should be booked to elicit a fan reaction, not to just wallow in booking purgatory. I don't disagree that a lot of this would be a good way to improve over the CURRENT product and a lot of why 50/50 booking is bad given the way things are. But it's still this extra level of unnecessary complication... if nothing else, not having tiers would simplify things. Like, let's say The Fiend takes over Smackdown with his superpowers and his evil. Dude needs to get toppled. And let's say... I dunno, Strowman is the one chosen to do it: he ends the storyline by finally being the one to topple The Fiend, and he winds the championship in the process. There is zero need for Strowman and Wyatt to be presented as BETTER than everyone else on the roster. They might get the most TV time, and the arc of their story might get the most attention, but it's not because they're more competent than everyone else: it's because they happen to star in the main story right now. Strowman isn't innately better than the current midcarders; he's just in a better position to beat the bad guy because of whatever internal and external factors you want to name. If there are tiers, then you can't build Strowman up to topple Wyatt without convincing fans that STROWMAN IS BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE, because those two things are synonymous. Strowman is Getting A Push, which means the bookers 'see main event potential' in him. You can't just tell one story, because everything going into a story is also going into this eternal ongoing story of "who do the bookers think are the stars?" And fans can easily reject THAT story, even if you do everything right with the ACTUAL story your writers are trying to tell. This also introduces huge amounts of tedium into the show, because now, every match Strowman has until the point he beats Wyatt, there's either two options: Either he wins, or the bookers Wreck The Strowman Push by having him lose. That is a lot of TV time full of foregone conclusions. Even if you're building up a challenger, it can make sense for them to lose sometimes... you just can't communicate to the audience that means they're less important or innately weaker because of it! This doesn't remotely mean that everyone on the roster, like, rotates equally through main-character status, although certainly it'd be spread out more than it is now. It means that, in kayfabe, you make it so everyone's pretty much equal in terms of ability... so everyone COULD plausibly be an important character. As a necessary consequence, this would also mean that payment and backstage treatment wouldn't be tied to card placement... which is the real reason this would never happen. It's too convenient for the WWE (or any wrestling company) to convince people to work for peanuts, with the vague promise they'll be one of the winners one day.
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ssdrivin
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Post by ssdrivin on Nov 15, 2019 18:08:20 GMT -5
I think we all agree that it's important that just about everybody on the show actually do something to keep them relevant to the audience. That goes for main eventers, midcarders, and even low tier acts, arguably sometimes even jobbers; if the fans feel invested in what they're doing, they'll care more about the entire show. But I don't agree that things need to be looked on with a "backstage WCW politics" view when determining who's in what tier; it's up to a smart booker to know what kinds of talent they're working with, what role best suits those talents, what the long term potential is for each wrestler in terms of card position, etc., and book accordingly. Some people are can't miss main eventers; other have that potential but need to be built up over time; others are "mechanics", as Steve Austin says, who solidify your midcard, etc. Doesn't mean people can't move around the card, but a good booker should have a feel for each wrestler's upside. Lucha Underground was a promotion that did a good job of starting out without a clear tier system, instead presenting everybody as a relatively equal threat, but even then after a time things began to shake out into an "it's reasonable to expect X to beat Y" form. That doesn't mean Y has to be a loser, not have a story or character arc, or otherwise be uninteresting; to the contrary, LU did a fine job of taking wrestlers who might've started out lower in some people's eyes early on and building them up over time into headlining acts, and even if they didn't they still allowed the lower level wrestlers to display personalities and take active roles in storylines. But it does mean that in order for expectations to ever be successfully subverted, they first need to be established, and even LU got to the point where it was clear that, say, Pentagon, Puma, and Mil Muertes were the top card acts, that guys like Cuerno and Fenix were a tick below them, and on down the line. Didn't mean the top guys could never lose, but it meant they entered matches as the odds on favorites. I just feel like this is another area where WWE has kind of poisoned the discourse well; their tier system, such as it is, basically boils down to "You Matter" and "You Don't Matter", and then they still 50/50 book their roster into oblivion to keep anyone from becoming a star unless the office wants them to be one seen as one. They could easily do it better than this: don't allow anybody to fall into the "you don't matter" category, be more receptive to fan reactions for particular wrestlers, don't be afraid to let someone go over cleanly more often than not, etc., but they just seem terrified to commit to anyone who isn't in the incredibly tiny handful of people they've designated as "mattering". Everybody should matter on a wrestling show; doesn't mean they'll win all the time, but no matter your position you should be booked to elicit a fan reaction, not to just wallow in booking purgatory. I don't disagree that a lot of this would be a good way to improve over the CURRENT product and a lot of why 50/50 booking is bad given the way things are. But it's still this extra level of unnecessary complication... if nothing else, not having tiers would simplify things. Like, let's say The Fiend takes over Smackdown with his superpowers and his evil. Dude needs to get toppled. And let's say... I dunno, Strowman is the one chosen to do it: he ends the storyline by finally being the one to topple The Fiend, and he winds the championship in the process. There is zero need for Strowman and Wyatt to be presented as BETTER than everyone else on the roster. They might get the most TV time, and the arc of their story might get the most attention, but it's not because they're more competent than everyone else: it's because they happen to star in the main story right now. Strowman isn't innately better than the current midcarders; he's just in a better position to beat the bad guy because of whatever internal and external factors you want to name. If there are tiers, then you can't build Strowman up to topple Wyatt without convincing fans that STROWMAN IS BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE, because those two things are synonymous. Strowman is Getting A Push, which means the bookers 'see main event potential' in him. You can't just tell one story, because everything going into a story is also going into this eternal ongoing story of "who do the bookers think are the stars?" And fans can easily reject THAT story, even if you do everything right with the ACTUAL story your writers are trying to tell. This also introduces huge amounts of tedium into the show, because now, every match Strowman has until the point he beats Wyatt, there's either two options: Either he wins, or the bookers Wreck The Strowman Push by having him lose. That is a lot of TV time full of foregone conclusions. Even if you're building up a challenger, it can make sense for them to lose sometimes... you just can't communicate to the audience that means they're less important or innately weaker because of it! This doesn't remotely mean that everyone on the roster, like, rotates equally through main-character status, although certainly it'd be spread out more than it is now. It means that, in kayfabe, you make it so everyone's pretty much equal in terms of ability... so everyone COULD plausibly be an important character. As a necessary consequence, this would also mean that payment and backstage treatment wouldn't be tied to card placement... which is the real reason this would never happen. It's too convenient for the WWE (or any wrestling company) to convince people to work for peanuts, with the vague promise they'll be one of the winners one day.
To me, Strowman could be the guy to topple Wyatt. Let's say Wyatt is taking over Smackdown, but Strowman largely has no reason to care, he's up near the top, it's not really affecting him much, no big deal, but Wyatt starts affecting his matches and stuff. Ok, now Strowman's angry, Wyatt's got his attention, and he pulps Wyatt for getting in his way. That makes sense to me.
Although I've not been watching lately, I do know that they were building Strowman as SUPER STRONGMAN. I saw him doing his Strowman thing, lifting trucks and all that jazz, and that seems fitting for a man of his physique, I think. He would be, in my vision of WWE, one of those upper-midcard big men. Maybe not as nuanced, as established, as experienced as (for example) a HHH, but able to win matches through pure brute force.
I don't think that means either Wyatt or Strowman need to be super megastars, they're just bumbling along in their own tiers until the storyline says that Wyatt's done something to interfere with the higher tier where Strowman lives (and, as a side note, if you're going to paint Strowman as a super strongman, he needs to be up there somewhere, capable of giving Lesnar a black eye or two). They can still interact, despite not being in the same tiers, and Wyatt can still pull tricks out of his bag to distract or unnerve bigger/better guys, but if Strowman's the ultimate boss in this angle then he's the "I don't care about your mind games, I'm here to mash humans into paste" guy, and he'll win to conclude that story.
I don't see that this is any kind of argument against tiering at all. I feel that Strowman should be "higher" than Wyatt, given how they've both been booked - Strowman's stronger, he's either immune or vulnerable to Wyatt given his Wyatt family connection in the past (book that however makes sense for the end result), he's been less of a goober than Wyatt in the scheme of things. So I'd say he's above Wyatt in terms of "how do these people stack up in the WWE universe?" and it'd make perfect sense for Strowman to take Wyatt down.
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